Published by Douglas Messerli, the World Cinema Review features full-length reviews on film from the beginning of the industry to the present day, but the primary focus is on films of intelligence and cinematic quality, with an eye to exposing its readers to the best works in international film history.

Monday, December 9, 2013

John Huston | Key Largo

proven thespians

by Douglas Messerli

Richard
Brooks and John Huston (screenplay, based on a play by Maxwell Anderson), John
Huston (director) Key Largo / 1948

The
plot of John Huston’s Key Largo might
be described, basically, as a series of coincidental events that work toward
getting the major characters and actors together in one or two rooms. A hotel,
owned by James Temple (Lionel Barrymore, with pants pulled up over his belly)
and run by his daughter-in-law, Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall), has been “occupied”—in
both the ordinary and military meaning of that word—by gangster Johnny Rocco (Edward
G. Robinson), his moll, Gayle Dawn (Claire Trevor), and his cronies and thugs, “Curly”
Hoff (Thomas Gomez), “Toots” Bass (Harry Lewis), and Ralph (William Hade). Into
this tense situation walks Major Frank McCloud, by accident choosing this very
moment to share his war-time memories with the Temples, and a Deputy Sheriff,
Clyde Sawyer (John Rodney). While passions and violence simmer inside the
oppressively hot Key Largo hotel, outside a hurricane begins to bluster,
drawing the local Seminole Indians and two escaped Indian prisoners, John and
Tom Osceola, to the hotel doors. Obviously, now that the cast has all come
together, the tough talk can now begin and the fireworks set off.

Based on a poeticized play by old-time
wordsmith Maxwell Anderson, the highly revised script by Richard Books and John
Huston, takes on various groups of actors, one by one, accommodating each of
their demands, needs, and emotions with Huston’s camera dutifully following.
What they say is fairly stereotypical, with Bogart, once again, playing the disillusioned
idealist, Robinson, the loud-mouthed gangster, Barrymore the fearless liberal,
Bacall the quiet and needy would-be lover, and Trevor a drunken and abused ex-singer.
The others serve as variations and oppositions to these types.

Given the stagey gimmickry of this wooden
play, it is almost a wonder that it remains watchable today. The acting,
obviously, is what sets it apart from the hundreds of Petrified Forest imitations filmed over the decades. Like his Rick
of Casablanca Bogart as McCloud, at
first bowing out of any heroism, ultimately becomes the hero by killing all of
the bad guys one by one on boat in which they are trying to escape to Cuba. The
Bacall character, despite having hardly any lines, gets her man. Barrymore gets
a chance to strut his stentorian voice, and Trevor to slur her words. Most of
the others also die. It is almost as if we are witnessing an audition for
various character types. But then, these are not just ordinary actors, and that’s
what makes this work, at times, crackle with energy and radiant delight.
Perhaps because we do know these actors so well and get to watch them here so play
to type, the movie, amazingly, comes alive. Robinson has been better elsewhere,
sputtering out his ego-driven evil, Bacall has been far more sexy and clever
(it is no accident, surely, that the misogynist Huston hardly knows what to
make of her), and Bogart has certainly been more self-assured in his
pretend-cynicism as he attempts to cover over his own heroic past, but the
chemistry that comes from having them all in one room, at moments, is as
exciting as the footage of the furious storm stolen from the Ronald Reagan
melodrama, Night unto Night.

And then, out of the blue, so to speak,
Trevor/Gaye Dawn is asked to sing one of her old torch songs. She refuses to do
so without a drink, but Robinson barks out another command. Slowly and
unsurely, the actress begins “’Moanin’ Low” a
cappella, in a voice that might once have been fairly sweet. Legend has it
that Trevor believed the song would be dubbed, and kept asking Huston to
rehearse it, he assuring her there was still plenty of time before the shoot.
One day, however, he announced that it was time for the song, and demanded that
she perform it on the spot. If the song begins all right, the tune soon goes
off key, slows down, falters, and breaks off. It was a take! Bogart, a gun
pointed at his heart, goes to the bar, pours out a drink and offers it to her: “You
deserve this.” Trevor won an Oscar for Supporting Actress for what one might
describe Huston’s mean trick!

Still, I’ll surely watch Key Largo next time it flickers across
the television set.